Isabella

Question 1

How is Isabella represented throughout the play?

Answer 1

A character full of contradictions:
* in some ways she does not conform to prescriptive gender roles for Jacobean women as per her decision to join a nunnery and involvement in the public sphere.
* However, in some ways she is represented as subjugated by male power and becomes a vessel for patriarchal rhetoric.
* She is represented as the embodiment of Christian virtue but is some ways corrupted by her counterparts as per her involvement in the bed trick.
* She is conflicted between her private desire for mercy but also the desire to follow the letter of the law

Question 2

How do critics interpret her character? (positive)

Answer 2

*Isabella’s spiritual mono-lingualism is genuine

Question 3

How do critics Interpret her character (negative)

Answer 3

• Critics have argued whether Isabella is the “embodiment of christian virtue or pagan pride”

Question 4

Isabella fetishises her own morality and virtue

Answer 4

• There is a vice that MOST I do abhor.
• And MOST desire should meet the blow of justice.
• For which I would NOT plead but that I must.

Question 5

Isabella is represented as a skilled rhetorician and orator.

Answer 5

• “O, it is excellent to have a giants strength, but tyrannous to use it like a giant.”
• “But man, proud man, Dressed in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d; … like an angry ape plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven.”

Question 6

The embodiement of Christian virtue

Answer 6

• “If He, which is at the top of judgment, should but judge you as you are? O, think on that and mercy will breathe within your lips like a man-new made.”

Question 7

In some ways she does not conform to prescriptive gender roles for Jacobean women as per her decision to join a nunnery and involvement in the public sphere.

Answer 7

• “Sign me a present pardon for my brother, Or with an outstretch’d throat I’ll tell the world aloud What man thou art”

Question 8

In some ways she is represented as subjugated by male power and becomes a vessel for patriarchal rhetoric.

Answer 8

• “show me how good father”
• To whom should I complain? Did I tell this,
  Who would believe me?
• “Implore her, in my voice, that she make friends To the strict deputy; bid herself assay him”